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There is a particularly devious type of malicious software that locks users out of their own computer systems until an individual agrees to pay a ransom to the hackers. In these cases, the FBI has surprisingly suggested just ponying up the dough.
It's not the type of advice one would typically expected from the FBI, but that's exactly what was recommended by Joseph Bonavolonta, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's CYBER and Counterintelligence Program Boston office.
"The ransomware is that good," said Bonavolonta at the 2015 Cyber Security Summit in Boston, as quoted by Security Ledger. "To be honest, we often advise people just to pay the ransom."
Yeah, it's RT, but I did a search, and that or similar headlines popped up on dozens of news sites. I clicked a couple of them, and the stories match. Try this one,
https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/fbi-ransomware-malware.html
Personally, I can almost certainly afford to nuke and reinstall, unless they get my RAID array. Then - I'd have to think hard.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by danomac on Thursday October 29 2015, @10:46PM
Someone clicked a bad link in an email and it installed this. It slowly, but surely, started going through the entire workstation encrypting everything it could see, including any network shares. However, it did not spread from there and we caught it relatively quickly.
Our backups saved us for the most part. We did lose some files but none of them critical, things like temporary scratchpad spreadsheets and the like. The only reason our financial data were saved was because it was in use and so the malware couldn't encrypt it.
Having snapshot backups meant we lost only a few hours of work. After that our spam filter was tweaked to not let through emails for services we actually use (they're used internally but never get sent an outside email.) Which is why we got burned... the phishing email came in was from a service we actually use. Well, used. We're moving away from that particular service now, but not because of the phishing attempt, too many other issues with it.